Arjana Blazic – Bart Verswijvel

Category Archives: fclsumac18

During this last (but not least!) day, participants had an interactive introduction to eSafety in schools and classrooms, with tools such as Mentimeter to evaluate and analyse the use of social networks by students and teachers. Then, they learnt more about digital storytelling, and they get to know what tools they could use in their classrooms. During the afternoon, they took part in the creative challenge of the day, which was on “digital stories”. After working on their subjects for a while, they presented it one by one, helped by the big screen of the FCL. This was the occasion to take stock of their FCL experience, and to start working with Thinglink.

At the end of the day, they all received their participation certificates, after doing a little “duck” exercise. Indeed, Bart gave each participant a LEGO package, and asked them to create their own duck with it. Then, all of them put their creation on the same table, and concluded that with the same package at first, there was an infinity of possibilities!

This week was pretty intense, and particularly interesting, made of discoveries and meetings for everyone. The FCL team was really happy to welcome teachers in Brussels, and hope that they enjoyed the courses as much as possible!

Thursday, the 5th of July, participants discovered the principle of flipped classroom, its goals, strengths, weaknesses, and how to implement it in the classroom. Arjana asked participants to follow her instructions while creating a butterfly in origami. Conclusion: those who never experienced origami before were quickly lost. For their second try, teachers had access to a video on YouTube that they could play as much as they want, individually. The experience was a success: all the teachers end up with a butterfly origami. The goal of this experience was to understand what children can experience in class, when they don’t succeed to do an exercise and the teacher is not able to help them one by one; and how to address this issue thanks to flipped classroom.

On the afternoon, teachers designed an activity they could do in their classroom, responding to the criterias of active learning. They presented it to the rest of the group, explaining what they were planning to do, and how to realise it.

Finally, participants shared their feelings on the FCL experience, and on what they’ve learnt during these 4 days. Then, they had the opportunity to discuss with members of European Schoolnet, on the occasion of Open Office Day.

During this sunny Wednesday, teachers learnt about virtual reality, and how to use it in their classroom. For instance, they drew flags, and imported it on their tablets to make them move. Then, they discovered QR codes, while doing a quizz with Plickers.

Before lunch, participants did a group picture all together, and certificates were delivered for those of them who were staying 3 days. After that, they attended to a course on computational thinking, and then discovered different exercises divided in 3 workshops.

This morning, participants were divided into 2 groups: waffles and chocolate. They both had access to an intro to digital content curation, and a course on the basics of Twitter and Instagram. While the first group was trying the famous Twitter dance, the other realised circuits with drawings and small lamps in the making and tinkering workshop. After lunch, the course was about “design thinking in the classroom”, followed by the creative challenge of the day.

At the beginning of the day, our 31 participants took part in an ice-breaking activity to get to know each other, and get familiar with the Future Classroom Lab learning zones and technologies. Then, they shared their innovative teaching practices in groups of 3, and finally made a scavenger hunt before lunch.

After a little break, the course resumed with an activity on escape rooms and breakouts. It ends with a workshop on gamification and incentives, with several games and tools that teachers could use in their school.

Thirty-one participants arrived at the Future Classroom Lab on Monday morning and immediately we started with creative activities. The focus of the first day was on gamification of learning – how to make learning challenging but also fun for students.